Meeting the Future

By Teenangel

Summary: Four people from Atlantis's future come through the gate; they're their kids.

Note: this story is related to Journal of a Genius's Daughter, and for the sake of third person I had to give her a name. The kids are from two years after the end of the journal. This assumes they never contact Earth.

Oh my god, I finally updated.

Disclaimer: Again I am wasting an obscene amount of my college time writing fanfictions which have no academic value. Being a college student I am poor beyond reason, suing would be fruitless.

OOOOOOO

Karkeroff shuffled through the crowed breakfast scene of the commissary, ignoring the turning heads and whispers, hoping he could think himself invisible. He hid himself at a round table behind a large plant and sniffed at his cup, wondering if real coffee had been overrated. He had grown up on the coffee replacement from Arali, which was rich and sweet and so strong he would fill two-thirds of the cup with water. Only the McKays drank it straight.

"Bitter," he noted to himself, licking his bottom lip, "but no complaint."

He drank half the cup in one gulp, slammed it down and slumped forward, eyes barely open. Sleep would've been nice, but sleeping arrangements had involved all four of them shoved into a room with two mgyvered bunk beds. Naturally, Shemp was above him and had started snoring at around two am. So Kar had gotten dressed around four and chose to wander the empty halls waiting for the cafeteria to open.

A couple snickers caught his attention. He turned an eye to notice chocolate bars and candy being put down on table where five military officers sat. They began making a list of female personnel they considered below their standards. A grinned spread across his face: they could make all the bets they wanted, no one would win. His dad had won the Atlantis female lottery.

The caffeine began to buzz. His eyelids didn't feel so heavy and the awareness that his glasses had slipped past his nose made him sneer to himself. He pushed them back and a clear image of John Jr. coming out of the food line filled his vision. Grabbing his coffee, he sauntered off to see if his father-to-be was in the lab.

OOOOOOO

Owl eyes slowly creeped around the physic lab doorway, "Hello, D—uh. Radek?"

Frizzled hair bolted up from the far corner, glasses hanging hooked to one ear, "What, yes, I'm awake, awake. Rodney?"

Kar stepped into the room, "Dobré ráno."

Zelenka's hands clumsily searched for his glasses, finding them, and shoving them onto his face with no regard to where his ears were. He moved forward, eyes frozen on Kar's face. He suddenly knew what the Major meant when described it as a 'distorted mirror'.

"You're Karkeroff?"

"Ano."

"But I don't like kids," Radek stated to his half-asleep self, incapable of inner-monologue. Kar's eyebrows relaxed inward, his mouth parted, and hazel eyes pointed to the floor. It took long minute for Radek to awaken enough to connect the reaction to the fact he'd said his thought out loud.

"Oh," he startled, "Oh no, sorry."

"Mom said you were nervous when I was on the way," Kar trembled, "she never said anything about you not wanting m—a kid."

"No, no," he put tentative arm around his son. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm not very good with kids, I mean, I never expected to have any, not that it wouldn't be great to—but kids are not—"

"You never really wanted me?"

"Oh, uh," Radek watched the young man's eyes water, "I'm sorry. I'm sure I love you very much. You never broke things when you were little, never made anything sticky?"

Kar took a deep breath and composed himself, "No, I was well-behaved."

Radek patted him on the back, "Good, good," he wandered over to his work desk and began tinkering with a project Rodney wanted done by that afternoon, "You work in the lab with McKay's daughter, yes? I can understand what that can be like."

"We—you, her, and I—work very well together."

"Really?"

Kar nodded and sighed, leaning on the table, "I guess what Rodney told me was true."

"Excuse me?"

"That when my mom told you about me, she was crying through the bathroom door, I never knew why'd she be doing that. And that you didn't talk to her for three days afterwards, Rodney said you slammed a door on his finger when he tried to talk to you."

"Copak!" cried Radek, knocking parts on to the floor.

"Oh no," chimed a voice, "I hear loud Czech words, this isn't good so early." Aida skipped into the room and halted between the two men, "Dobré ráno!"

"Sklapni!" Kar snapped and then slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes as big as saucers, "Oh, Aida Im sorry, I didn't get sleep and—"

She began to clap, "Oh my god, I don't know what you did Z, but keep it up. Next time scream that at Shemp, okay." She smiled scarily and took two giant steps towards Radek and squeezed him around the waist, "Good morning, Z," she singsonged letting him breath.

"You're a morning person?" he said.

"Yuppy, yuppy."

"Her mood will change around noon or if something doesn't go right," Kar said, leaning down to pick up parts from the floor, "You are chirpier than normal."

"Shemp left for a jog around six and you were already gone."

"Huh?" the answer spelled itself out on her flush cheeks, "Oh, oh oh oh oh. I oh, I don't need to know this. There's an image in my head," he pinched his nose and tried to imagine a field of grass, John Jr. covered in chicken feathers…something else other than….

"Don't blame me, it's your head that's good at coming to conclusions. Just think of Kira." She watched Kar's face soften up, "I didn't mean in that way…damn it, now you've put an image in my head."

"I don't want to really know, I think I do, and I don't want to," Radek muttered, "And I do like the idea of having a son, really I do. But even now I'm terrified."

Aida put a hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry I take good care of him."

Radek looked at Kar, "Should that be reassuring?"